Uncle Volodya says, “The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable. ”

There’s something awkwardly touching about Robert Coalson’s enduring faith. Like a child closing her eyes and reciting “I do believe in fairies” three times, he is imbued with the certainty that Russia’s collapse is just around the next corner. And he yearns for it: hard to say why, he must have his reasons, but he doggedly picks through the gimcrackery on show each month and weeds out the gems he believes showcase Russia’s savagery, authoritarian despotism and unfitness to be part of the civilized world. Although it is clearly a labor of love, it must be a hard row to hoe these days, as the country folk say. Russia’s stubborn refusal to collapse on schedule must be disappointing. But like a good zealot, he simply sighs and moves on to the next article of faith.

This post is only peripherally about Coalson, though, because it was his cautious excitement expressed in a Tweet – which I still think is about as mildly stupid a means of communication as writing simple messages on your naked buttocks with a Sharpie marker and bending over to display your intellectual bankruptcy to the world – over an article by certified paint-chip-eater Leonid Bershidsky (Thanks, Peter).

I don’t mean to imply – by calling him a paint-chip eater – that Bershidsky is stupid: far from it. In fact, he is a gifted writer with an elegant, readable narrative style and a command of English that is nothing short of remarkable, assuming it is his second language and that Russian is his first. But like so many, perhaps all of the kreakly (for those not familiar with the term, it is a portmanteau of “creative class”, but beginning with “k” to ensure the hard sound prevails), his creativity is hopelessly enslaved to saccharine liberal daydreams in which the prodding and jibing of the west against Russia are simply examples of tough love on the part of an exasperated parent who just wants Russia to get off its tookus and be all it can be. These dreamers often come from well-to-do and highly educated families with foreign connections, partially or wholly educated abroad; young Leonid, for example, was educated in California and received his MBA from Insead in Fontainebleu, France. He was the founding editor of Vedomosti, a joint project of The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, neither of them Putin fans by any stretch of the imagination. Young Leonid left his university studies to return to Moscow, driven by a dream that Russia would join the European Union, and seems to blame Putin because it never did; it is clear he has a hate on for Putin. But although Putin strove for closer integration with the European Union, highly-placed analysts were unambiguous that Russia would “never be ready“, a view that is all the more comical now for western scrabbling to try to seize Ukraine for a prize for the EU despite its rampant corruption, ruined economy and recent appetite for Nazi displays of repressive power. Russia is too big, and not submissive enough, refusing to tug its forelock to the west.

Depressingly familiar also in Bershidsky’s thinking is the reverence of the kreakly for the oligarchs, and their entirely unsubstantiated conviction that with great wealth comes a great desire to do good, exemplified in his article on Roman Abramovich extolling the good that rich businessmen are capable of – and that much is true – coupled to a naive conviction that they will; “But whatever the businessman’s reasons for running in Chukotka, there is a certain justice in one of Russia’s wealthiest people trying to win votes in one of the nation’s poorest regions. One hopes Abramovich is not without his share of decency and some of the wealth will rub off on Chukotka.” Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of Yulia Latynina’s batty rant that only the wealthy should be allowed to vote, because only those who are not hungry can be trusted not to vote with their bellies? And is anyone else curious why wealthy businessmen are accorded the status of minor gods in Kreakletown, while Vladimir Putin – alleged by the same social demographic to be the wealthiest man in Russia – is a shitheel they can’t wait to get rid of? Is it perhaps because they know he doesn’t really have any money?

Yes, wealthy businessmen almost invariably lift up the poor around them to an ecstasy of prosperity. Like Kolomoisky did for Dnepropetrovsk. Or Akhmetov for the Donbass coal miners, many of whom are spitting out the window of Rolls-Royces right now, thanks to his munificence.

And so it was with weary resignation that I came upon the latest wild tangent of reasoning by Bershidsky; although he is a “Russian patriot” who was moved to see Russia “get up off its knees” (since 1991, a period that seems deliberately contrived to spread the process so as to make it appear Putin had nothing much to do with that resolution and repair, despite the fact that the late 90’s nearly saw the complete collapse of Russia), he took his place in the “fifth wave of emigration” because it was fundamentally dishonest for him to contribute his Russian tax rubles to the theft of Crimea. Yes, folks, even though Crimea was a gift to Ukraine by the First Secretary of the Soviet Union which was accomplished without soliciting the opinion of anyone else in Russia, Ukraine’s claim on it is the only legitimate one. Fuck what the people who live there think.

It’s a pity I have tired myself out, and just feel disappointed and uninspired now that I have at last come to what I wanted to talk about – not Leonid Bershidsky at all, but an article written by him which overturns the silly story that Capo di tutti cappi Putin not only owned a massive, sprawling mansion in the Marbella Regione of Spain, but that he planned to occupy his twilight years in the sunny vineyards, growing grapes so rare and precious that if a bottle of their wine was stolen, Putin would burn local villages in reprisal. Okay, that’s a little hyperbolic, but apparently these grapes are something else, very rare, just the sort of thing that would appeal to an it’s all-about-me dictator like Putin.

And now it transpires that the ritzy complex has nothing to do with Putin. We know this because Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption scouts ferreted out the real owner, Zoya Ponomareva, daughter of Valery Ponomarev. Bershidsky spends the rest of the piece reframing “nothing at all to do with Putin” so that readers understand that really all expensive property owned by Russian political figures belongs to Putin, and they’re just kind of holding it for him until he decides to take possession.

I don’t know what’s the more depressing – Bershidsky’s flushed-face defense of all-or-nothing liberalism and its values, or the fact that the kreakly will only believe that a stinking-rich scam has nothing to do with the country’s leader when they are so informed by a twice-convicted criminal who has no regard whatsoever for the rule of law, and picks and chooses those he will obey and those he will not.

849 Responses to Godfather Putin Among the Grapes of Wrath

15 minutes ago
John McCain and several other senators have called on President Barack Obama to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian-backed rebel groups.
Mr McCain said Russian aggression in Ukraine was the “gravest threat to European security in decades”.
The Republican senator acknowledged defensive weapons would not help Ukraine win an all out war but would “raise the risk and cost Russia must incur to continue its offensive”.

“Since last April more than 5,350 people have been killed, thousands of residences have been completely destroyed.

The shelling by the separatists is indiscriminate. They hit hospitals, schools, public areas with civilians waiting for the bus, for transportation, for food supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee – that’s if they’re even able to get out – leaving everything behind. Families are huddled in basements and at train stations, without food, without electricity, not knowing whether they will be able or might be able to leave.

So this is the reality that people are facing here…”

All the work of the “Russian backed separatists.

He then goes on to say that as a result of this, the US is giving them more money

The US wants to rerun the end of the war in Macedonia (sorry Greeks!) where the Albanian terrorists had been surrounded and were about to be eliminated and at the last moment, the US forces a pause just enough to send in Ch-47 Chinooks to rescue them!

It is one good reason that I liked Robert Harris’ Fatherland where Nazi Germany won the second world war. The US accepted the fact and JFK was going to normalize relations with Hitler.. After all, they may be Nazis, but Nazis are pro-business. That’s what matters.

My understanding is that the US negotiated the release of the Albanians, with a pledge that UN peacekeepers would disarm them, which of course didn’t happen, Rwandan style (also no disarment of foreign terrorists, despite pledges…) Although the Albanian terrorists were demoralized enough to stick to opium trading.

I was going on memory but now I’ve looked it up again, buses not helicopters:

” I remember when the Macedonian army was closing in on Aracinvo and the trapped NLA.When all of a sudden they were ordered by NATO to stop and NATO buses came and picked up the heavily armed terrorists along with 17 American military advisors from MPRI (a Virginia based company similar to Backwater) and the Macedonians were pissed they had to let them go. With heavy pressure the Macedonians were forced to negotiate with Ali Ahmet the NLA leader at that time. Kind of a bad situation there. ”

” German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt reported on it and European intelligence intercepted conversations between the partners as well as Macedonian intelligence. The German BND with its close ties to Albanian groups must have known as well. Michel Chossudovsky reported on it ,Scott Taylor wrote a book on the conflict .There were riots in Skopje when people found out what happened. On June 25-26 2001 5,000 people occupied the parliament building and shouted anti-Western slogans. ”

” Yes i do.I participated in the conflict.MPRI trained me too.They were contracted to Macedonian army you know.That was the sole reason why the KLA was evacuated from the village.We even knew the names of the instructors who were there.Which was nothing strange.It is a private company providing services for a certain amount of cash. ”

From the start of the operation in Aračinovo, NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson described the Macedonian assault on NLA held Aračinovo as “madness” and “complete folly”. In a strongly-worded statement, Lord Robertson urged the government to cease hostilities as Macedonia, he warned, was “on the brink of bloody civil war”.[80][81] According to General Pande Petrovski, who was in charge of the operation, on 25 June at 9:00 in the morning, he was called by the President and was told that the NATO General Secretary had called him personally telling him to halt the operation because there were Americans trapped in Aračinovo. Petrovski, however, ordered the operation to continue. At 12:45 the president telephoned general Petrovski again and said:

“General I want until 13:00 all of your activities in Aračinovo to be halted, and you will go to hotel “Belvi” to meet with NATO envoys. Don’t you dare use the aviation, don’t play games, I already explained what’s the matter!” (page 110)

Petrovski ordered a halt to military activities by security forces and headed towards hotel “Belvi” where he encountered TV crews, foreign diplomats, government representatives, and representatives of the President’s cabinet. He was informed that everyone was awaiting the arrival of Xavier Solana at 16:00. In his memoirs, on page 111, Petrovski then states that:

“Brigadier general Zvonko Stojanovski the commander of the Army Anti-air Defence informed me that our radars caught 6 fighter planes with course from Italy, through Albania towards Macedonia. i told him to follow their course and to dislocate the helicopters to the reserve airfield in Lozovo. I then though to myself – this is it! NATO is ready to use force on us if we continue with the operation”. (page 111)

Petrovski’s description of these circumstances was confirmed by Glenn Nye, a state department official in the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia. During the 2002 congressional elections in the USA, Nye revealed that while assigned to Macedonia and Kosovo, in 2001 he organised the rescue of twenty-six American citizens who were trapped behind insurgent lines.[82][83][84][85] For this action, Nye received the State Department’s “Superior Honor Award”.[82]

According to researchers Mark Curtis and Scott Taylor, the foreigners who were evacuated from Aračinovo by NATO forces were advisors from the American military company MPRI.[86]

During the meeting held the same day in hotel “Belvi”, the EU’s senior foreign policy official, Javier Solana, put great pressure on the government to stop completely military activities in Aračinovo, and to let the NLA insurgents leave the encircled village.[87] After talks between President Boris Trajkovski and Javier Solana, the Macedonian government officially announced that it had ended its offensive against the NLA in Aračinovo. According to western media reports the talks were apparently “extremely acrimonious”, with the Macedonians reluctant to abandon the battle they were convinced that they were going to win.[88][89]

Solana asked Macedonian officials to allow the evacuation of the NLA insurgents from Aračinovo to Lipkovo, and that it be conducted the same day. During the evacuation, the insurgents would take their weapons, and their dead and wounded with them.[87] Being exposed to great pressure by the international community, government officials allowed the NLA insurgents to be evacuated from Aračinovo to Lipkovo. The details of the logistics of the evacuation were organised by the USA special envoy for the Balkans, Peter Feith.[90] The evacuation started at 17:00 and was conducted by U.S. Marines from the American contingent within KFOR in Kosovo.[69]
####

And a piece at the time from the late and very great col. David H Hackworth:

“Last month, American troops in Macedonia rescued 400 Albanian rebels who were members of the 113th UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army) Brigade. This operation didn’t pass the smell test for me. I couldn’t stop asking myself why NATO brass would risk the lives of 80 American paratroopers to save a band of heavily armed cutthroats bent on overthrowing the established government of a country that our president and State Department have repeatedly stated they are committed to save….

…Sources in the U.S. Army in Kosovo familiar with the 3/502nd Airborne Battalion’s rescue operation confirm that the mission was all about saving the “17 ‘instructors’ among the withdrawing rebels — former U.S. officers, who were providing the rebels with continued military education. But that was not enough: The Macedonian security forces claim that 70 percent of the equipment taken away by the guerrillas had been U.S. made — to include even the most modern third-generation night vision devices,” as reported by the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt on June 28.

Other sources say the “17 instructors” were members of a high-ticket Rent-a-Soldier outfit called MPRI — Military Professional Resources Incorporated — that operates in the shadow of the Pentagon and has been hired by the CIA and our State Department for ops in ex-Yugoslavia. The company, headed up by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Carl E. Vuono, is filled with former U.S. Army personnel, from generals to senior sergeants, all of whom draw handsome wages on top of their Army retired salaries. …”

Kerry would not recognize a tank if it was in his parking space when he showed up at work. Luckily, his recognition skills will not be put to the test – he has Kiev to tell him all about the baaaddd Wussians, and he just parrots it. Stephen Harper isn’t much, and our Foreign Minister just quit day before yesterday, but if I was American I would squirm with embarrassment every time John Kerry escaped the workers with the padded hooks and fled to another country to exhibit his chronic shoe and mouth disease.

interesting about john baird quiting.. i don’t know the story behind that.. maybe he got tired of the letters i wrote him telling him i was sick of us walking in goose-step with the usa on every move towards another fucking war.. they will probably find someone worse to replace him.. they have a lot of rejects in the regressive conservative party..

Yeah, I don’t know the story on that, either. I’d like to think a few politicians around the world would quit in disgust at the stance of their government on Ukraine, and the utterly disgraceful disregard of international law that lets the state use its military to pummel civilian population centers on the excuse – never used before in such a situation, to the very best of my knowledge – that the state has a right to protect itself from a foreign aggression nobody has proven exists. On the contrary, international law should tend to support Russia, which seems to be the only thing standing between the Donbass and mass murder.

But that’s not the way politics works, which is why it is a whore’s game played by whores who will sell themselves for the sake of alliances which may one day do them some personal good.

###
Yes, we all had hoped that he had shuffled off his mortal NATO coil, but like ‘ex-ambassadors’, he is always on duty and available for the media circus when they need some filler. It makes me feel like a villain* in James Bond. Just when you think you’ve got rid of the annoying little shit, there he is again!

* If I had a choice, it would be Ernst Stavro Blofeld from Diamonds are Forever. He’s got a long-haired cat with a diamond necklace after all. Not to mention I’d like to be the gal from Tiger Bay if I were a lady.

Well I’m not a lawyer, but I doubt that the latest draft of bill 1317, that from February 4th, would stand in front of a western court of appeal.
It goes at length to make the

• positive representation
• of any employee
• of most* military or security organs – past or present –
• of the Soviet Union or Russian Federation
• in any form of picturesque work of art (even animation films and slide-shows)
• to be broadcasted on the territory of Ukraine – be it in movie theaters, on TV or over the Internet –

a punishable offense.

—

Quick update about Ukraine’s moronic ban on Russian media – aside from all the categories I already mentioned, anything and everything filmed after 1 January 2014 in Russia, irrespective of what it is (including musical programs, sitcoms, etc) is now officially banned in Ukraine.

I’m thinking Kiev is GREATLY underestimating how many people are going to be p|ssed off at this. There’s literally not going to be anything to watch in Ukraine now. The stupidity of this is downright comical.

—

ThatJ: Russian culture has negative conservative, anti-liberal influence, it needs to be replaced by Judaized Hollywood crap. Good job, “patriots!”.

yalensis – i think you are misunderstanding thatj.. this is just my take, and i could be wrong, but his last statement in particular is what appears to be very sarcastic comment on the changes that are being suggested or implemented.. i take it that he thinks exactly opposite of what he actually said, but if you don’t do sarcasm in english you could be forgiven for misunderstanding him.. that is my take and it is subjective too!

Dear James:
You can ask him, but I am pretty sure that ThatJ was NOT being sarcastic.
He took the story hot off the press (how Ukraine is going to ban all Russian movies and also any movies that depict Russia in a good light – this story was all over the press yesterday, and ThatJ read all about it in military photos, just like everybody else did

ThatJ took this story and turned it into an attack against Jews.
In previous comments (I think on other blogposts) ThatJ has also railed against how Jews control Hollywood and use it to promote their insidious Jewish propaganda all over the world.
ThatJ combined the concept of (Russian movies being banned in Ukraine) + (Jewish control over Hollywood) to form a synthesis, that now Ukraine will be completely subject to Hollywood Jew propaganda.

If ThatJ were to read a story in the press, about how grass is green, he would try to find a way to twist that into an anti-Jewish rant.

Also, the comment of ThatJ’s that I responded to, is quite typical of his usual style.
He quotes verbatim 5 paragraphs or so from an English-language source (in this case military photos), and then ends the whole thing with a flaming drop of anti-Jewish poison.
In this case, about Jews controlling Hollywood.

I think the whole discussion would just drop dead overnight if we could stop talking about the Jews and how they are trying to take over the world. But apparently it is too fascinating a subject to abandon. I don’t like Zionists, don’t like the Israeli government’s position on just about anything you care to name. But I don’t have anything against the Jewish people and they should be able to live wherever they please so long as they support themselves and don’t enter the country illegally. I further think this is pretty much a default position everywhere except in Israel, the United States in general, parts of the UK and in the Australian and Canadian governments. But we keep going round and round the same maypole anyway.

thanks yalensis and mark… yalensis – you could be right about thatj.. i am surprised he hasn’t commented here in response, but perhaps he missed these comments, or? at any rate i do agree with mark here in his general comments on the topic of jews/israel/zionism. thatj if you are reading here, i would be curious to know your thoughts on what i am basically speculating on in response to yalensis.. thanks.

Because:
(a) you don’t know squat about Russian culture, so you don’t have the right to opine on whether it’s liberal/conversative, or what values it promotes. Russian culture is all over the map and expresses a diversity of cultures and points of view. and

(b) because you twist everything that happens in the world, to spread hateful and slanderous propaganda against whole peoples!

No, actually you don’t (have to speak or read Russian) to understand Russian culture.
However, in ThatJ’s case, his understanding of Russian “culture” is just some construct that he created inside his own head. He thinks Russia is some bastion of the white race, engaged in daily battles against Jews and darkies.

I suppose that even if he learned the language, it wouldn’t help him, as his pre-conceptions are like an impenetrable wall.
But reading some Russian might help him avoid, at least, say, the gaffe, in which he jumped to the conclusion that Zakharchenko had come out at a press conference with a huge denunciation of Jews!

PS Since Anatoly Karlin’s above linked translation on Liberasts and Liberasty, the 4th degree liberast Novodvorskaya is, sadly, no longer with us: her disease became terminal and killed her off a few months ago.

High risk groups: Persons of Jewish nationality, students, unemployed with higher educations, liberal arts majors with low earnings, tourists from the provinces recently returned from their first trip to the West.

Persons of Jewish nationality?

Anti-Semite!!!!!!

And Jewish nationality?

Is there such a thing?

The original text reads: лица еврейской национальности.

Anatoly has faithfully translated the Russian word for word into English: I, however, should imagine that “the Jewish people/tribe” would would have been better.

Yes, you’re right; Eberstadt is obviously the least crazy and most honest person in the room – you can tell, both by his expression, which suggests a horse that is either mildly startled or mildly drunk, and his height. But I’m not sure if the “short people are venomous dictatorial autistics” applies to Anatoly, because he is not the President of a country. That I know of. If he is, he’s never mentioned it, but he’s quite modest so I suppose it’s possible.

I have written a lot in this blog already, and if you didn’t get a clue by now, then I’m sorry to say that you’re a slow learner. I won’t type a book-sized reply to your question, because neither you nor I can define complex ideologies (which nobody has a monopoly over) in one line or paragraph.

We can trace the background of certain cultural and political trends, the players, and what they have evolved into today, and this is not a simple task.

Prof. Kevin MacDonald’s “Culture of Critique” series can do the job better than I ever will:

I always get warnings when I try to open links to Occidental Observer and have received warnings to the links above, which I presume are also to that journal.

Why is this?

Is there really something nasty and virus-like there? Or is it simply censorship?

The warnings come from my Yandex browser.

I have often ignored these warnings and suffered no ill consequences. I know this because I have given my PC a full system scan following visits to sites about which I have received stern warnings.

I really do suspect that this is censorship. A long time ago I downloaded “Mein Kampf” and received similar warning before doing so: nothing nasty happened to my PC. I downloaded the diatribe so as to quote something from it. I wasn’t quoting Hitler in his defence just using his quote in in argument online. The person with whom I was having the debate immediately broke of correspondence because I had quoted Hitler, telling me that he found it offensive to read such words and that she sincerely doubted the integrity of anyone who should desire to post hist words.

This reminds me of when I was a a 14-year-old and searched in my town’s library for “Capital”. It wasn’t on the shelves but was catalogued. So I asked for it and the first volume of Marx’s work was duly brought up from the basement, where it had been apparently kept hidden from the prying eyes of the proletariat. I well remember how the librarian gave me a withering look as she handed it over to me. Perhaps she was just pissed off with me for causing her to seek it out in the nether regions of the great Victorian pile that was my hometown’s central library, but I think not. I am sure she thought that I, nor anyone else for that matter, should not be allowed to read it.

Have you tried accessing the links with other browsers? For example I accessed the “Occidental Observer” website a couple a times while using Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (at work) and Mozilla Firefox (at home) and I didn’t get any warnings. When ThatJ posts links to articles on Occidental Observer I usually read them to get an idea of what he is talking about and I didn’t see anything worth censoring🙂

This censorship of anything appertaining to Nazis, no matter how tenuously, really bugs me. It’s got so bad, what with this so-called Godwin’s Law, that these ever-so-righteous defenders of free speech deem an argument invalid if Nazidom in any way, shape or form is mentioned or anything that can be classified as “anti-Semitic” – because Nazis were, of course, anti-Semites.

For example, last year, before the Grauniad banned me from making comments to that arsewipe, I responded to a Guardianista, who had been ranting on about how vile a place “Putin’s regime” was because there one could openly, without let or hindrance, flog women who were “dissidents”: the person was talking about the so-called public flogging by “Cossacks” of Pizda Riot” in Sochi. So I countered by saying this was a wholly put-up job, a complete charade, and sent video evidence showing the “Cossack” entering the venue for the show together with PR, Pete the Pedo, assorted cameramen and a woman who acted as if she was the director of the whole spectacle. The “Cossacks” were a motley crew – one was tiny – and none were wearing the uniform of a Cossack police auxiliary employed by Sochi city authorities for the duration of the Olympic games there. And I linked an article which described in detail how the whole spectacle had been pure showbiz. The article was in Russian, but I translated the relevant bits that gave evidence of the whole operation being a fake.

The response that I received was toodecry the evidence because in part of the linked article, its author described the whole operation as yet another one set up by the Jewish oligarchy, bankers, Anglo-Zionists etc. The evidence was considered invalid by my interlocutor simply because the person who had presented it was an anti-Semite, a “Nazi”.

Likewise with Mr.Irving. I have read nearly all of Irving’s publications, both in the English language and in German. Irving, despite his political beliefs, is a methodical researcher and has unearthed much valuable material concerning the Nazi years and Churchill and the British Empire and the USA’s role in WWII. Irving’s research is so good that some who disagree strongly with his politics have even plagiarized his works.

In Irving’s biography of Churchill, there is presented very strong evidence of how the Anglo-American Churchill’s chief objective in the war years was to lure the USA into a European confrontation with resurgent Nazi Germany and in doing so, basically, for better or worse, sold out the British Empire to the USA. If this is true, then it is highly ironic that Churchill brought about something that Hitler never intended, the end of the British Empire, but which Churchill maintained was amongst the Nazis’ goals.

But I digress. This bloody Godwin’s Law and the invalidating of all arguments if they can have the label “Nazi” pinned on them is totally illogical.

For example, consider the following syllogism:

Humans are mortal.

Nazis are humans.

Nazis are mortal.

That argument above is logically valid and its conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true.

There are some, however, that believe that the above syllogism is invalidated because it concerns Nazis.

To go back to the Guardianista’s opinion that the evidence showing the so-called Cossack assault on PR in Sochi was manifestly faked simply because an anti-Semite/Nazi/fascist or whatever had presented this evidence is just as illogical as saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is untrue because Hitler believed that it was.

Certainly not; it is in my blogroll, and is one of the best Russia blogs on the net.

That is a powerful message from those old soldiers, who must be revolted at the re-emergence of this old scourge. It is, also, the best indicator yet that Europe never intended any sort of European partnership with Ukraine, and merely wanted to use it against Russia. That’s why they don’t care if it is completely destroyed in the process. They must have known they could not merely manipulate and stroke the Nazis so they would serve the coup, and after it was over they would just put away the swastikas and wolfsangels, say, “Well, that was fun” and proceed to be good and docile European citizens.

“Here in the 70th year after the victory over Nazism, we, veterans of that terrible war and participants in that most horrible combat, are aware that a spectre again is haunting Europe, a spectre of the Brown Plague. This time it is Ukraine that has become the nursery of Nazism, where from the fountainhead of an ideology in ultranationalism, antisemitism, and inhumaneness, there have come into practice rejections of other cultures, physical violence, elimination of dissenters, and murders motivated by ethnic hatred.”

Here is big news that is going unreported (unsurprisingly). Canada (the people, that is) may regain control of its central bank and with it the means to regain its prosperity. Of course, the bankers won’t take this lying down as their private credit creation is the foundation of all their power.

hi james,
i don’t know what to make of this legal case to change the system or creating bonds to help pay the interest rates to the private banks, back to what they imply was the original idea of the gov’t lending interest free money for federal projects – hwy’s, airports and etc. etc. bill still mentions 1974 as a turning point. i believe this is very close to the time that nixon took the us$ off the peg to gold, so perhaps a few things happened here to precipitate the changes that meant our debt ballooned from a small amount to such a large amount in such a short amount of time..

that said, perhaps as i understand it the central banks come under the jurisdiction of the imf and that the imf implemented changed to the way that central banks do things.. this is my feeling on this, but i could be wrong. i don’t believe the central bank of any country has to answer to the local gov’t, or only to a certain degree. what is missing in bill stills commentary are these types of broader dynamics that would also have to be changed in order to get back to prior to 1974 when trudeau changed the process of interest free loans for gov’t projects to private banks controlling and profiting from these same loans.. perhaps you or someone else here has a special insight into all this?

Saker talks about the possibility of a false flag attack on the civilians who’ll be evacuated during an arranged ceasefire tomorrow from Debaltsevo, just when the Munich Security Conference is meeting in Germany.

What really gets on my nerves is that Donetsk and other rebel-held cities are being shelled everyday with numerous victims and the West says nothing, and what is worse, the junta soldiers shoot blindly from miles away at the populated areas, they are not even trying to hit rebels, just punishing the citizens.

(Btw, excellent chart in that article, well, not quite so excellent for the Hryvna, but excellent for analysts.)

“Will the West step up and give Ukraine the substantial sums of money it needs to avoid default? It is certainly possible. But so far the West has proven remarkably reluctant to spend any actual money helping Ukraine. When it comes to rhetorical commitments the West has proven incredibly supportive, and barely a day goes by without a statement from Brussells or Washington about the West’s “unshakable commitment” to Kiev’s sovereignty, security, and independence. But the Ukrainian economy doesn’t need more press releases, it desperately needs dollars and euros. Unless it gets them very soon there won’t be a Ukrainian economy left to reform”

The problem there is that the West has enough to stagnate Ukraine, but giving out any more money, would be viewed with extreme caution by the voters. Obama is actually stupid enough to go after the upper middle class, (but not the one percent,) and those are the people that vote. Saying “give me your life savings to save America” and then handing those off to Ukraine’s Oligarchs is not going to go over well with his faction’s sides. They’ll shift to Republicans, who’ll state “yeah, Obama should be mean to Putin, but why’s he giving money away to those clueless scrooges, we need real leadership in Ukraine, leadership that Obama cannot provide…” Granted, they’ll say with a professional tone, but that’s going to be the message, and Obama knows it.

As for the EU – how will they impose austerity over Greece and give free handouts to Ukraine? That’s simply not possible. Furthermore, Putin has the backing of Chinese banks, (who aren’t going to be hard hit by Yuan deflation,) whereas the US/EU are spent. Sure they produce a lot, but they consume a lot more. And beating US in economics is the way that China wanted to announce the Chinese Century of Leadership. 你好世界！

Am I frustrated? Not really, it was predictable, and it is what it is.

American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea — that is, essentially on North Korea –including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.2 The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.3

By the end of the war, North Korea claimed that only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang.

Thanks for the link Tim. It was a very interesting read. I had some idea about the destruction North Korea suffered at the hands of the Americans, but I didn’t have any idea about the specific numbers involved. Truly horrifying…

here is my inaugural piece on peter at ks – he is mad and bad.. what is not to like about a robot that can only dredge up putin in some negative context off a headline one would have to be braindead to bother reading? i am obviously braindead for responding to your drivel. this will be my last! continue on robotic mad and bad peter..

Jul 22, 2013
Mental health continued to be a key factor in deaths in or after police custody in 2012-13, according to statistics published today by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)

The report Deaths during or following police contact: Statistics for England and Wales 2012/13 shows that:

Deaths in police custody remained at 15, the same as last year, and many fewer than in earlier years. But almost half (7 out of 15) of those who died were known to have mental health concerns, the same proportion as in 2011-12. Four of those who died were known to have been restrained by police officers.

Lededev’s Independent can get out the crying towel for this poor woman, another victim of the brutal Russian state. But never a word about the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk, shelled without letup for weeks for speaking Russian. Hey, remember that security guard in the USA who blew the whistle on Nixon and Watergate? The one who lost his job and then was arrested for stealing a pair of sneakers as a birthday gift for his son because he didn’t have any money? Yeah; I know. Whataboutism.

How aiding the Ukrainian military could push Putin into a regional war

By Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy February 5 at 8:21 PM

Fiona Hill is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Clifford Gaddy is a senior fellow in the center. They are co-authors of the book “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”.

The United States is on a dangerous trajectory in its relations with Russia, a nuclear superpower that believes itself to be under direct threat. Several former U.S. officials and top think-tank experts released a report calling on the West to provide military support to Ukraine. (Two of them, our colleagues at the Brookings Institution, expanded on the report a week ago on this page [“Ukraine needs the West’s help now”].) The logic of sending weapons to Ukraine seems straightforward and is the same as the logic for economic sanctions: to change Vladi*mir Putin’s “calculus.” Increasing the Ukrainian army’s fighting capacity, the thinking goes, would allow it to kill more rebels and Russian soldiers, generating a backlash in Russia and ultimately forcing the Russian president to the negotiating table.

We strongly disagree. The evidence points in a different direction. If we follow the recommendations of this report, the Ukrainians won’t be the only ones caught in an escalating military conflict with Russia.

In the jargon of geopolitics, Putin enjoys “escalation dominance” in Ukraine: Whatever move we make, he can match it and go further. In August, when it looked as though Ukraine might rout the rebels, Putin increased the stakes and countered the Ukrainian military. Drawing on those lessons, some Russian security analysts are now pushing for a preemptive invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Russia should go all the way to Kiev before the West takes further action. One recent such plan suggested that Moscow was losing momentum in the conflict and should not waste more time on fruitless negotiations. The Western press coverage of the issue of lethal weapons can only convince those in Moscow pushing “full war and invasion now” that their approach is correct.

We also must consider the effect that arming Ukraine would have on our European allies. The report has created an uproar in Berlin and other European capitals, stoking concern that the Obama administration will take steps others are not ready for. If Putin concludes that transatlantic unity can be shattered, with the United States facing the possibility of going it alone in Ukraine, why would he change course?

Our problem is that we do not fully understand Putin’s calculus, just as he does not understand ours. In Putin’s view, the United States, the European Union and NATO have launched an economic and proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and push it into a corner. As Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has underscored, this is a hybrid, 21st-century conflict, in which financial sanctions, support for oppositional political movements and propaganda have all been transformed from diplomatic tools to instruments of war. Putin likely believes that any concession or compromise he makes will encourage the West to push further.

Anyone who argues that Putin’s wartime rhetoric is a bluff is making a very risky assumption. We should bear in mind the wars that Putin has waged in Chechnya and Georgia. Before Putin came to power, during the first Chechnya war, the Russian military collapsed, the people balked and President Boris Yeltsin’s government negotiated with the Chechens. In the second war, Putin put his intelligence service in charge and convinced Russians that the sacrifices were worth it. The war was brutal, and the military and civilian casualties high; there were no negotiations. Then, in 2008, Putin called NATO’s bluff on Georgia. Some reasoned that, if Putin knew Georgia would eventually become part of the alliance, he would refrain from moving against it militarily. But the West wasn’t prepared to fight for Georgia, and Putin was.

Since Georgia, Putin has prepared the Russian military to fight a regional war behind the ultimate shield of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. And he has spent a great deal of time and money telling his people that he is defending the Russian nation in Ukraine. His past actions suggest he will do everything he can to convince them that Russian military sacrifices in Ukraine are worth the cost. The delivery of lethal U.S. weapons to Ukraine would help Putin make that case. They will be part of the proof he needs.

We face a huge challenge in devising a strategy to deal with Russia that does not fuel this escalatory cycle and puts Ukraine on another path. We also need to draw bright lines around transatlantic unity and work to preserve it. It is hard to find effective alternatives to the current sanctions policy, but if we plunge headlong into sending weapons, we may lose our allies, and we may never have the opportunity to get things right.

“In August, when it looked as though Ukraine might routkill all the rebels including women and children, Putin increased the stakes and countered the Ukrainian military.”

The west’s deliberate blindness on this is sickening. I guess their beliefs go “if they don’t want to be killed, they should run away somewhere”. Remember that defense for the next time the west has an onion shoot in its bandana, crying bitter tears over the plight of some strategically-aligned rebels somewhere. If they don’t like it, they should just get the fuck out. If you resist, they’re allowed to kill you ’cause you’re a rebel. If you don’t resist, they’re allowed to kill you because you didn’t leave.

Yes, it’s true, as you can see from attached photo.
An excited François confessed: “She is everything I ever dreamed of in a woman.”
The happy couple are soon heading to Moscow, where their nuptials will be blessed by “The Godfather” himself!

They were made for each other: they’re about the same age and Hollande has been in the market for a new girlfriend for a whole calendar year now.

Only problem is deciding who’s going to wear the pants since they both have a history of deferring to others: will it be Hollande, Merkel or the third person in their marriage, John Kerry or whoever Obama delegates?

TRANSLATION
After a company of ethnic Hungarians from Transcarpathia were mobilized and sent to the (Eastern) front lines by Kiev, and then were captured by insurgents, Zakharchenko issued an order to release these soldiers.
The DPR declared, that these ethnic Hungarians were drafted by the Ukrainian army nine days ago, and turned out to be completely unfit for service, according to the (Hungarian) portal kresy .
In connection with this event, activists in Budapesht carried banners reading “Thanks, Zakharchenko! May God preserve the Hungarian nation and the warriors of Donbass!”

As the Hungarian portal noted, the insurgents announced that they have no intention of fighting against Transcarpathian Hungarians.

Earlier in the week, the Committee of National Security of the Hungarian Parliament already condemned what was going on with the Hungarian minority living in Ukraine, whereby Hungarians were being disproportionately drafted into the Ukrainian armed forces. [yalensis: in the past, Huns have expressed suspicions that Kiev wishes to kill them off by sending them to the front lines]

“Poroshenko is holding hostage the Hungarian minority living in Western Ukraine, and is forcing them to fight for the chauvinistic goals of the Ukrainian government,” declared Hungarian parliamentarian Marton Gyongyosi. “This is not our war. Not one single Hungarian should have to fight for Poroshenko,” he added.

This fourth wave of mobilization began in Ukraine on 20 January, two more (mobilizations) are planned for April and June. Certain categories will not be subject to the draft, specifically those in poor health, students and graduate students, members of the clergy, parents of 3 or more children, and residents of areas not under (Kiev) government control.

Representing the General Staff of Ukrainian army, Vladimir Talalai [yalensis: Талалай – is pronounced like “Tell-a-Lie” – ha ha!] communicated, that the price for avoiding conscription will be 2-5 years in jail. He also mentioned that the army will start drafting women between the ages of 25 and 50.
END OF TRANSLATION

There were also 249 Ruthenians in that company. Zakharchenko for some reason knew the exact count. But they don’t even have a neighbouring country to stand up for them. He described them as brother slavs an fellow countrymen. He was asking all of them to just surrender so he could send them home.
A number of other surrendered soldiers were described as “later left the territory of DNI” which sounds like they didn’t return to Ukraine…why would they, if they’d be up for desertion there? So surrender is the route to Russia for those who missed getting there before being caught by the draft press gang.

According to Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal Industry, the industrial production would have stopped but for the 1,000 megawatts of energy that Ukraine imports from Russia

KIEV, February 6. /TASS/. Thanks to the electricity imported from Russia, Kiev managed to settle the country’s misbalanced energy system, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Vladimir Demchishin told the parliament on Friday.
He said earlier the Ukrinterenergo Company had signed an agreement on import at a “very adequate price”.
“As of today, without import, the misbalance, as the temperatures are slightly lower and the consumption has been growing, is one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts. If we did not have the opportunity to receive that 1,000 megawatts, we would have stopped the industry; we saw that in December,” the minister said.

Cassad’s reports about the situation in Debaltsevo. First link in English, describes the situation from a military point of view, second link in Russian describes (from what I can understand from Google translating) the measures taken to evacuate civilians from the Debaltsevo area.

Excellent quote from the American in that, at about the 11 minute point: ‘In Washington, we have these discussions about weak, strong, weak, strong. We never have a discussion about what’s smart and what’s stupid’.

The US must demonstrate its power – that it remains the world’s hegemon and indispensable nation. The US cannot afford to show “weakness” in this crisis. Otherwise Russia and China may become emboldened and challenge the US elsewhere.

Lively and informative discussion as usual from CrossTalk, I specifically enjoyed Mercouris’s contribution and completely agree with his assertion that the “Federalisation of Ukraine train has left the station”. That option is no longer acceptable for the people of Donbas.

Diplomatic efforts are under way to end renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting in the capital Kiev in an effort to kick-start a new peace initiative.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is also in Kiev, said the US wanted a diplomatic solution, but would not close its eyes to Russian aggression.
James Reynolds reports from the embattled town of Debaltseve, as residents wait to be escorted to safety by the Ukrainian military.

Funny all this talk coming out of the West about not redrawing borders when the West itself redrew borders, first preparing the ground with the Badinter Commission to legalize the break up of Yugoslavia along administrative lines, then the changing of Serbia’s border to create the narco-state known as ‘Kosova’. Butter wouldn’t melt in these mofo’s mouths.

It happened to Pussy Riot too. We heard they were going be the next Bobby Sands, but they actually put on weight. Don’t forget Timoshenko’s miraculous recovery from the “horrible” conditions she was subjected to. The Kremlin might have a secret recipe that makes lard look like coffee.

“Would you like to try a cheese burger Bobby Sands?” as sung by Glasgow Rangers fans.

Bundle of laughs, those blokes were.

Until quite recently, you couldn’t play for Rangers if you were a Roman Catholic.

“The incessant bigoted chanting by Rangers fans at Hampden was shocking. Inarguably the most socially-backward fans in British football. The really damaging thing for RFC is, it’s not the mythical ‘small minority’. There appear to be 1000s upon 1000s singing these songs.”

Graham Spiers (Journalist) on his Twitter feed commenting on Glasgow Rangers in their league cup final appearance (March 2011)

Going on historical antecedents, are we going to see a repetition of Cutilheiro’s peace plan in Bosnia in 1992 where all parties signed up to a European plan until Sarajevo pulled out after US Ambassador Warren Zimmerman told Izetbegovic that if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to sign it and the US would support him?

Obviously the Cutilheiro plan came before the war whereas thre is already war in the Ukraine, but rather the US pulling the plug on a plan that turned out to be in most respects very similar to the Dayton Agreement signed three years later +100,000 dead. A great victory for american diplomacy!

Ukrainian government troops are being outgunned by pro-Russian rebels because they lack new anti-tank weapons and radars, a military expert says.

Modern heavy armour gave the rebels the advantage in fighting at Donetsk airport recently, Reuben Johnson of Jane’s Defence told the BBC.

Ukraine has asked the US for Javelin anti-tank missiles and hi-tech radar that locates heavy artillery, he said.

Washington is considering whether to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons.

So far the US has not delivered arms that can match Russian equipment.

Nato, Western governments and the Ukrainian government say Russian regular troops are fighting alongside the rebels, using new heavy armour and artillery. Russia denies that, but says Russian “volunteers” have joined the rebels.

“The Russian equipment in eastern Ukraine is some of the best they have,” said Mr Johnson, based in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

“About 70% of Ukrainian anti-tank missiles are old or even expired. But almost all the Russian armour is reactive – that means boxes of explosives cover the tank, so when a missile hits a box it blows up the missile without harming the tank.”

The Javelin is a seriously expensive piece of gold-plated kit, the kind of stuff that the US specializes in and means it has to spend such a huge amount of money for so little.

There are plenty of much cheaper euro AT weapons available (what’s wrong with the polish stuff as that is the most likely to be supplied rather than other kit from Sweden or Euro kit?) but the Ukes have been offered a sniff at the American crackpipe and now they want the whole shebang. They are in la-la land.

I have yet to see a picture – properly authenticated – of a tank operating in Ukraine during the present conflict which is not part of the known Ukrainian inventory. They dance around this issue here by suggesting “Russian equipment is newer and has reactive armor”. Horseshit. Ukie tanks have reactive armor, and the conversion kit for the T-72 is made in Kharkiv at the Malyshev plant.

“Installation of armour modules and explosive reactive armour results in the following increase of the T-72 tank protection level: against chemical energy attack (high-explosive anti-tank projectiles) – by twice; against kinetic energy attack (armour-piercing projectiles) – by 1.6 times. The explosive reactive armour ensures the tank protection against the following weapons over the frontal arc: anti-tank hand grenades, manual and stationary grenade launcher rounds and no-recoil gun rounds; anti-tank guided missiles of the Shturm-S, TOW-2 and Milan type; high-explosive anti-tank rounds fired from 125mm guns; armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot projectiles fired from 125mm guns or 120mm guns from a distance of 100 m. The placing of the explosive reactive armour elements inside armour containers makes them impregnable to damage from 7.62mm small arms, 12.7mm automatic gun rounds, and artillery shell fragments. The explosive reactive armour elements do not detonate when hit by 30mm automatic gun projectiles or exposed to effects of the incendiary mixtures of Napalm type or volumetric explosions.”

That’s why they want the Javelin – it has a dual shaped-charge warhead made to penetrate reactive armor, and they have been trying for a long time to get it, while the former commenters at the Kiev Post used to be positively frothing about Javelins and how just a few of them could change the entire momentum of the battle. This is simply a new way to hold out the begging bowl – our tanks are old and shitty, and the rebels have an endless supply of brand-new ones from Russia.

Keep an eye on those backstabbing Baltic countries, too – Estonia bought a pile of Javelins after the Georgian conflict, and the three Baltic states bought $63 Million worth of Carl Gustavs in 2013. It would not be hard to imagine some of those making their way in a clandestine fashion to Ukraine.

I am not optimistic about the soon to be revealed “peace plan”, because the mobilization in Ukraine is still being pressed and there will be two more mobilization waves this year.

I think we may be witnessing another attempt by Ukraine to save its troops in the cauldron, regroup, mobilize a huge army as opposed to the half-baked attempts to take Donbass which we have seen so far, and then launch a blitz on Novorossia.

John Schindler of the 20committee.com wrote:

***Why Ukraine Is Losing

…[T]o cite a more recent example that likewise puts Kyiv in a poor light, in 1991 Croatia saw fully one-third of its territory seized in a few months by Serbian rebels who were backed by Belgrade. Croatia had to create a military almost from scratch, possessing few heavy weapons, while burdened with counterintelligence problems at least as bad as Ukraine’s today. Yet by the end of 1991, by executing a true mass mobilization, Zagreb fielded an army of 150,0000 in sixty brigades, and thereby managed to blunt Belgrade’s effort to subdue Croatia by force.

Croatia stopped the Yugoslav military’s putative effort to destroy their country through sheer grit, helped by Serbian incompetence. Indeed, the Yugoslav offensive to crush Croatia was far larger than the effort Putin has made in the Donbas to date, while the epic siege of Vukovar in late 1991, which ended in Pyrrhic victory for the Serbs, was more intense than what’s going on around Donetsk now.

By early 1992, the war calmed down, front lines became more or less static, and Croatia resolved to get back the one-third of its country that had been seized by Belgrade. Zagreb understood this was a long-term project that required the building of a proper military machine. Croatia’s president, Franjo Tudjman, had many flaws, but he was a military man by background and he understood the strategic imperative. For the next three years, Croatia methodically built a new army along NATO lines, with discreet Western aid, while laying the diplomatic basis for eventual victory in what they call the Homeland War.

When the time was right, in mid-1995, as the Greater Serbia project was falling apart and NATO had tired of the antics of Slobodan Milošević, Zagreb unleashed Operation STORM in early August, the largest military operation in Europe since 1945. With lightning speed, 130,000 Croatian troops struck and within three days most of the country was back under Zagreb’s control, demoralized Serbs having folded in the face of betrayal by Belgrade. Three years after STORM, thanks to smart diplomacy, Croatia recovered all the territory it lost in 1991, setting the country on a path to membership in NATO and the European Union.

***
So there must be no peace plan as long as Porky is mobilizing Ukrainians. Today we are hearing a lot from many Western politicians saying that arming Ukraine is not an option. But are they to be trusted? The tune can change anytime, and it will, after Ukraine mobilizes a massive army. There is nothing to stop the Anglo-Zionists from changing their mind once a proper military force is in place.

The peace plan should include an anti-mobilization clause, or else this war will become more, no less, bloodier in the future.

But it’s still a very important step towards de-escalation. We have to begin somewhere. Halting mobilization is the compromise that I would ask from Ukraine. What’s more, the rebels will honor the ceasefire, and the other side knows about this.

Declaring a ceasefire, supposedly meant to bring peace, when on the other hand you are mobilizing a 100k+ strong army and positioning it around the rebel-held territory for a massive push at any moment, can only fool an idiot. Preparing for a massive push during a ceasefire does not violate the ceasefire itself, but the intention is clear.

It’s called buying time for a yet larger escalation, not de-escalation.

Let’s put things in perspective:

1) The rebels are supplied by Russia. They have heavy artillery and an endless supply of armor.2) They number over 30k people, Russian volunteers included.3) The Ukrainians fighting against the rebels are composed of Banderite volunteers and conscripts. The volunteers are no more than 1/4 of the forces.4) If a peace plan is reached, Porky can pull the army out of Donbass and place it in Kiev and other sensitive regions.5) The Banderites alone are no match for the rebels. They will either leave or be killed.6) Porky can easily defend his government from the Banderites, who are not heavily armed and whose supply will dry very fast once they are cut from being supplied by the army.7) Light-armed Banderites, without the support of the Ukrainian population (and Ukrainians want the war to end), are no match for the Ukrainian army. A third of the army forces present in Donbass are more than enough to secure the government against a coup by the Banderites.8) In other words, it’s cheaper to secure the rest of Ukraine against the Banderites than it is to fight a war in Donbass, requiring less personnel, less lost lives, less money and less destruction.

There is no peace because powerful players in Kiev and the West want no peace.

‘journalists have their role to play. Instead of acting as surrogate EU spokespeople by recycling press releases’ – but that is what journalists do nowadays! (That and copy reports from press agencies.)

Shouldn’t it be body count language? None of the usual suspects seem to be at all bothered with how many civilians in eastern Ukraine not under the control of Kiev have been killed. I guess they are tied together by bloodlust, metaphorical vampires.

The third photo captures the moment when Lord Sauron suggests to Merkel and Hollande that they watch the fish and the dolphins swimming in his private aquarium through the window opposite him, while his left hand stealthily reaches under the table to push the button that opens the trap-doors under Merkel and Hollande’s chairs, and the two hapless politicians fall into the shark tank below the floor.

EU Observer: US has little faith in Hollande-Merkel trip to Russiahttps://euobserver.com/foreign/127535…[Russian] president Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside and he absolutely ignores every agreement that his country has signed in the past and that he signed recently, including in Minsk”, he said in Brussels on Friday (6 February).

He added that Ukraine is “fighting for survival” against Russian “mercenaries and tanks and, as we say in the US, ‘little green men’ – soldiers without patches, which are sophisticated Russian special operations”.

“This is a moment where the EU and US must stand together. Russia can’t be allowed to redraw the map of Europe – that’s exactly what they’re trying to do”.

It seems that the US is only happy when bathing in other people’s blood.

This is a biggie:

EU Observer: Russia said to have blocked German flights to Afghanistanhttps://euobserver.com/tickers/127526Russia refused the German army access to Russian airspace twice this year, making it more difficult for German planes to reach Afghanistan, according to a report by German weekly Der Spiegel*. The Germany military leadership sees it as a provocation, Spiegel writes.

But this be da bomb which is suspect was timed to bury bad news with all the focus on Ukraine.

EU Observer: EU parliament downgrades ‘LuxLeaks’ probehttps://euobserver.com/political/127520The leaders of the largest political groups in the European Parliament on Thursday (5 February) downgraded a proposal to set up an inquiry committee on tax avoidance and fraud by multinationals.

The original plan, put forward by the Greens and backed by over 190 MEPs in January, proposed setting up an inquiry to investigate tax rulings in member states. …

…But the centre-right EPP group, centre-left Socialists, the liberal Alde faction, and the conservative ECR group opted for a weaker “special committee”.

The decision was based, in part, on a non-binding negative recommendation from the parliament’s legal services, which deemed the original proposal legally unsound.

“What is more important, this special committee will be in a position to propose legislative solutions,” said Italian MEP Gianni Pittella, leader of the centre-left socialist group…

In the next piece, the questioner is a piece of shit ‘euractiv senior editor’ and massive russophobe, as you can see from his blog at euractiv ( http://reuniting-europe.blogactiv.eu/ ) and as you will see from this interview, pitches loaded and biased questions. Chizov rocks it and takes down Gotev like the b*tch he is:

Vladimir Chizhov is a career diplomat. Before being appointed ambassador to the EU in 2005, he was Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He spoke to EurActiv’s Senior Editor, Georgi Gotev.

There is a lot of talk of sending NATO lethal weapons to Ukraine. Some in Europe say it’s a good idea to help the Ukrainians. Others warn it’s too dangerous. What is your comment?

My comment is clear-cut and simple. It would be the worst idea possible in these circumstances.

Does it mean that there will be real war?

Not a world war, no.

But will it be real war? Because now we have what some call a hybrid war, or a war by proxy…

It will lead to an escalation of confrontation, to further casualties. Whatever weapons the West may send to boost the Ukrainian army or the nationalist militias, it will not help them to win in this conflict. It is an unwinnable situation. It is a civilian conflict that can only be resolved by political means. Responsibility for continued fighting and further casualties will be on the shoulders of those pouring oil into the fire.

In the EU, the prevailing mood is that such a move would not be helpful. There are statements by a number of EU member states to support that.

But NATO says there are Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. President Poroshenko mentioned about 9,000 of them, so maybe the point of no return in this escalation has already arrived?

Well, it will take additional effort for NATO to catch up with the galloping estimates of President Poroshenko, who has already used the figure of 15,000. You know, whenever the Ukrainian army takes a hit in Donbass, the numbers tend to grow.

Of course, I’m glad to hear positive assessments of the capabilities of my country’s army – that the Russian army has been modernised, that it has become increasingly effective and so on. But come on, not to the extent of its soldiers becoming invisible. How can you imagine the presence of thousands of soldiers in a relatively small territory to be invisible? How can you imagine if troops in such numbers are engaged in fighting no one has got killed, no one has been captured, no document or ID has been seized to be shown on TV? No plausible imagery has been shown, either by satellite or from the ground. This is pure fantasy….

…But it was not Ukrainian fringe groups that perpetrated the shelling of Mariupol…

What makes you so sure about that?

The direction from where the fire came.

The direction, but not the distance. Of course the OSCE monitors can approximately guess the angle where the shelling came from, but not the exact distance. If you look at the map of the location of the respective forces in those days, there were elements of the self-defence forces, but behind them, several kilometers further, there were formations of the Ukrainian army. Until there is an independent investigation, I suggest you don’t jump to conclusions…

More at da link.

euractiv: Russia sheds light on Turkish Stream projecthttp://www.euractiv.com/sections/global-europe/russia-sheds-light-turkish-stream-project-311900EXCLUSIVE/ A telephone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras yesterday (5 February) covered the situation in Ukraine and the South Stream and Turkish Stream pipeline projects, the Kremlin announced. In the meantime, the Russian Ambassador to the EU provided EurActiv with some insight on Russian plans….

…EurActiv asked Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov to comment on these plans, and also recent statements by Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, who said that “Turkish Stream” was not a viable project.

Chizov said he was sure that when this idea was discussed during a visit of Putin to Turkey on 1 December 2014, “it was on the basis of certain calculations”.

If there is demand for Russian gas, the Turkish Stream project will work, Chizhov said, adding: “Of course, if (the) EU chooses to cut its consumption of Russian gas, there will be no point in building it.”…

…“Now, faced with draconian energy policy of the EU, including the infamous Third Energy Package, Gazprom has taken a more flexible view, and is prepared to deliver gas to the border of the EU, namely to that hub at the Turkish-Greek border. It could have been the Turkish-Bulgarian border, had the Bulgarian government been more consistent in its support of the project”, Chizhov said….

…As the diplomat explained, the existing Blue Stream across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey [with a capacity of 16 bcm/y] does not provide gas for Istanbul and Eastern Thrace, the European part of Turkey. Therefore, part of the new capacity could find consumers there. “That area can consume a lot,” he said.

Another option, Chizhov said, was bringing that gas to the Mediterranean coast, building an LNG plant, and delivering it “to the rest of the world”….
###

I also read today somewhere that the Russians and Greeks are talking about a proposed Greek pipeline section from Turkstream. Can’t find the link!

Yep, transit fees for Europe’s gas would help Greece a lot when they get out of Euro. They’ll need help. Gazprom may help them build it on a pay-later basis. It would also provide jobs Greece sorely needs.

It sounds as if Chizhov was daring Gotev to provide some proof of Russian soldiers being in Ukraine. If so, he either didn’t have any or decided this was not the time. I pick (a). He also specifically mentioned ID, giving Gotev the opportunity to raise that imbecilic “dogtags” trope, that Poroshenko managed to chivvy Putin into a ceasefire the latter did not want by threatening to broadcast the dogtags of dead Russian soldiers. Gotev didn’t go for that, either. I wonder why?

Challenge accepted. I was going to post this in response to Southern Cross’s “Relaxed Khokol” snap, in fact I was giggling to myself about it all day but I cannot access Youtube at work, it’s blocked (so is Facebook, I can see Twitter but can’t respond to it, and so on, because otherwise people would just be jacking around on social media all day). Anyway: Southern Cross, you laid-back junk-flasher, you – you will be glad to know there is a special clothing line just for “go natural” guys like you. A bit dated, but it might be an idea whose time has…uhhh….come again.

Ah yeah, I loved that vampire film, especially the bit where one of the three house-mates admitted he’d been a member of Hitler’s secret Nazi vampire squad during WW2 and that was why he had to leave his native Balkans to go to New Zealand after the war

…Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the leaders had agreed at “constructive talks” to continue working towards a possible joint document on implementing a ceasefire agreement reached in the Belarussian capital Minsk last September.

The three leaders’ next contact, he said, was expected to be by phone on Sunday…

…Back in their respective capitals in between the meetings, Mr Hollande called the talks “the first step”, while Dr Merkel said it was unclear whether the meeting in Moscow would secure a ceasefire….

…Dr Merkel said she and Mr Hollande were not on the road as neutral mediators but were representing European interests. “These interests are peace, maintaining Europe’s peaceful order.”…

It’s not an unreasonable guess that Merkel/Hollande wanted an immediate cease-fire to save neo-nazi Ukropy troops in Debaltsevo, but Putin wouldn’t be surprised by such a request. The other obvious one is that the front lines return to that of the Minsk Agreement that Kiev studiously ignored until it started having its ass hand to itself on a plate.

Bear baiting, arctic style. Finnmark is the Norwegian province closest to Russia, with difficult terrain and subarctic climate. Norway has not held any military exercises there for close to 50 years (since 1967), in order not to unnecessary provoke Russia. A bigger joint NATO exercise has been planned for 2018 with 25000 soldiers, but the army is coy about where in Norway it will be held.5000 soldiers take part in exercise in Finnmarkhttp://barentsobserver.com/en/security/2014/12/5000-soldiers-take-part-exercise-finnmark-05-12
Norway plans its largest military exercise in Finnmark in nearly fifty years with 5000 soldiers taking part in exercise Joint Viking in March.
The idea behind the exercise is to train in reaching Finnmark quickly and to have units from Air Force, Navy, and ground-based forces to work together in a limited period of time, Kolle says. He believes the biggest challenge with having the exercise in Finnmark will be the large distances and unfamiliar terrain.

It is not clear whether allied forces will take part in the exercise, but there is an opening for this. Russia has not notified if they want to send inspectors to the exercise, but they can if they want, NRK writes.
“One wants to show the world, and of course our neighbor in the East, that NATO is present and that NATO is both relevant and able to defend Norway if it should become necessary.”

Hilde believes the exercise shows that the carefulness from the Cold War is over and that the exercise will be paid attention to in Russia. “It might be perceived as provocative.”

During the Cold War, Norway declared that no NATO exercises would take part in Finnmark. This was one of several measures Norway took to keep tensions with neighboring Soviet Union on a low level.

There have not been any exercises including NATO-soldiers in Finnmark after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Here it is again, the “let ’em all hang out” Khokhol picture because…well, simply because it brings a smile to my face in this otherwise soul-destroying vale of tears and hell-hole of a land, where I exist, for want of a better word, under a tyrannical regime with only gopniki and vatniki for companionship.

Would that I had a handful of liberast acquaintances with whom I could while this drudgery of a life away whilst knocking back samogon and exchanging notes and observations on the monstrosity of this regime!.

But enough of this self-pity!

The picture:

And now, fellow Stooges, a confession: in the previous posting of the above picture, I claimed it portrayed a typical Khokhol (though Southern Cross says it is he, the photograph having been taken when he was a little tired and emotional), and indeed, around the slumbering oaf are words in the Ukrainian tongue that read (clockwise, starting at 1 o’clock): beer, call-up, Facebook, everyone to the front, Instagram, girls, vKontakte [the most popular social media organization in the Evil Empire], photos, mobilization, war, which words, I presume, are whirling around in the drunken salo-eater’s head.

However, I have since learnt that this picture is claimed by some to be a long lost Norman Rockwell entitled “”Cat Prevents Housefire”.

At first I was taken in by this claim, but on closer observation of the work, I noticed that the sot in the picture is hardly likely to be a citizen of the “Land of the Free”, for the labels on the beer bottles in the picture seem to indicate that they had contained none other than Zhigulyovskoe Pivo [Жигулёвское Пиво], a beer brewed in the city of Samara, Russia, and possibly the cheapest that one can buy in the former Soviet Union. It was, in fact, a most popular Soviet beer. A bottle of Zhigulyovskoe is illustrated below:

So the slumbering retard pictured above may well be a Moskal.

However, he could just as likely be a Khokhol who has been secretly quaffing beer imported from Tartary, an activity that is probably forbidden now in Banderastan, for if those nice persons in Right Sektor should find out that a Ukrainian, a true Slav, had been drinking Moskal beer, very likely the perpetrator of such unpatriotic behaviour would soon be bereft of those attachments that the cat in the picture above seems intent to play with.